A Fast Block Mode Decision Scheme for P- Slices of High profile in H.264/AVC

The recent H.264/AVC video coding standard provides a higher coding efficiency than previous standards. H.264/AVC achieves a bit rate saving of more than 50 % with many new technologies, but it is computationally complex. Most of fast mode decision algorithms have focused on Baseline profile of H.264/AVC. In this paper, a fast block mode decision scheme for P- slices in High profile is proposed to reduce the computational complexity for H.264/AVC because the High profile is useful for broadcasting and storage applications. To reduce the block mode decision complexity in P- pictures of High profile, we use the SAD value after $16{\times}16$ block motion estimation. This SAD value is used for the classification feature to divide all block modes into some proper candidate block modes. The proposed algorithm shows average speed-up factors of 47.42 ${\sim}$ 67.04% for IPPP sequences.